The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has decided to link two different kinds of systems ie "Mahassal" (direct taxes automation system) and "NEXUS" (broadening the tax-base) with the objective to analyse updated data on taxpayers on real-time basis.
Sources told Business Recorder on Monday that the "Mahassal", an advance version of Tax Management System (TMS), is using latest data of taxpayers for computerised processing of income tax returns. On the other hand, "NEXUS", data reporting system requires latest information from external sources for discovering new taxpayers.
As the "NEXUS" does not contain updated data on real time basis, it requires assistance of a system having latest database on income tax return filers. The idea is to electronically link "Mahassal" with "NEXUS" to get updated data of taxpayers on real time basis. It would be challenging task for the concerned authorities to make these systems compatible, these have different design in different formats.
If the system available with the "NEXUS" is not updated, it might result in incorrect reporting of data of taxpayer. Sometimes returns are being revised and other data pertaining to taxpayers get changed. In such circumstances there is a need of a system, which must immediately update data for analysis/verification. Otherwise, there is no use to verify/analyse old data for obtaining accurate results.
Sources said that the "Mahassal", has been successfully implemented at all the Regional Tax Offices except the Hyderabad where the system would soon be implemented. Sources said that the data entry of income tax returns for the tax year 2008 has been started under the "Mahassal" system at RTOs, which would be completed by the end of December 2008. The infrastructure development and training for the implementation of the system has been completed.
The FBR has managed to do data entry exercise without paying any additional cost to the computer operators etc. The infrastructure development, software, training of staff and availability of servers, local/wide area networks has been made at all stations and the system has been rollout across the country.
When contacted, sources in Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (PRAL) said that the data of electronically filed returns directly comes to the operational data store (ODS). The ODS has the capability to instantly transmit the data to "Mahassal" as well as "NEXUS" through this portal gateway of electronic database. Therefore, the procedure is to give taxpayer's data to all the systems whether "Mahassal", "NEXUS" or any other system.
On the other hand, data of taxpayers, who manually file income tax returns, directly goes only to the "Mahassal". From this system, the manual income tax data would be transmitted to the "NEXUS". It is an interchange of data between different systems through the ODS. Sources added that the "NEXUS" would start giving accurate results once the proper data is being loaded in the system.
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